The New York Times revealed that the Obama administration had prepared a cyberattack plan to be carried out against Iran in the event diplomatic negotiations failed to limit that country’s nuclear weapons development.

When I was 4 years old, my grandfather died. The preacher said "por fin el a alcanzado la paz" which means (in Spanish) that he has finally reached peace. As I listened to him I began to think that peace was really important if grandfather had to go away to attain it. So I asked my mom what it meant "to have peace".

It’s a full Moon. If past months have been anything to go by, this will be accompanied by a round of public chat about how this affects human behavior – claims of more hospital admissions and arrests, to crazy antics in children.

The Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks were the worst acts of terrorism on American soil to date. Designed to instill panic and fear, the attacks were unprecedented in terms of their scope, magnitude and impact on the American psyche.

For others, as for myself, the yearning for just a drop of miraculous balm to quiet the troubled waters of daily life is universal. Loved ones hope to heal the bitter quarrels that sunder them from one another. Busy people maneuver to snatch a moment of calm. Those who are poor long for the peace of a full stomach and physical security.

Media coverage of Donald Trump’s presidency has fixated on his outlandish, off-the-cuff tweets, his ill-conceived and inflammatory positions on immigration, race relations and climate change, his “America First” mantra, and his unrelenting attacks on the various inquiries into collusion with Russia.

Many women have wrestled within themselves about peace and war. Joining a chain of women stretching far back in time, they have asked, as they have asked for centuries, why humankind endlessly repeats the tragic cycle of violence and retribution. Once again, they have mourned lives needlessly sacrificed to bitter political and religious rivalries

What causes terrorism? The combination of the horrendous terrorist attack in Manchester and a British general election inevitably meant that this question would dominate political and media discourses.

The era in which we live is now officially described as an atomic Anthropocene or the “age of humans”, an epoch defined by humans’ impact on the planet – and one of its most distinctive features is radiation.

The UN secretary-general, Ban Ki Moon, is set to open a new investigation into the death of former secretary-general Dag Hammarskjold, whose plane crashed during a peace mission in the Congo in September 1961.

A number of catastrophic events have afflicted the Arab world in recent years. Western news reporting and Hollywood cinema tend to present these crises through disaster footage or stories about Western protagonists in which local people are merely extras. Film from the Arab world is often more complex and nuanced.

Chatham House’s new report on elite perceptions of the US in Latin America and the post-Soviet states – which follows a previous survey of Asia and Europe – underlines the uniquely daunting task of expectation management task that awaits anyone in charge of America’s image in the world.

Written by Erik C. Nisbet, The Ohio State University and Elizabeth Stoycheff, Wayne State University

Tensions are again mounting between Russia and Ukraine.Dubiously claiming provocation, Russia has stationed 40,000 troops on the Ukrainian border. Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned of a full-scale invasion.

Few images have captured the peculiar horrors of the war in Syria more powerfully than the photograph and short video that emerged recently showing five-year-old Omran Daqneesh sitting in an ambulance after being rescued from the aftermath of an airstrike in Aleppo.

The death of 22-year-old Dean Carl Evans, the second British man to be killed fighting the Islamic State in Syria after Konstandinos Erik Scurfield was killed last year, should prompt us to wonder why he and others would choose to travel to the frontline and involve themselves in the bloody civil war of a country other than their own.

Written by Clive Schofield, University of Wollongong; Rashid Sumaila and William Cheung, University of British Columbia

Contrary to the view that the South China Sea disputes are driven by a regional hunger for seabed energy resources, the real and immediate prizes at stake are the region’s fisheries and marine environments that support them.

The scent of chaos hangs heavy in the air. Donald Trump evokes it in Cleveland. Islamic State sows it in Nice, Brussels, Paris, Orlando. Britain is immersed in it after Brexit, while the EU struggles to prevent its onset amid mounting crises of migration and political legitimacy.

This has been a difficult year for humanitarian relief. Huge events have left indelible images. From a dead Syrian child washed up on a Turkish beach, to villagers trapped under rubble after earthquakes in Nepal and grieving families of Ebola victims in West Africa.

Opponents of the Iraq war often highlight the importance of oil when explaining why the invasion took place. While leaders at the time denied it was a motivation there is no doubt the country’s huge oilfields did offer possible post-conflict opportunities for the Iraqi industry and international corporations.

Last night, we sat toasting Bastille Day, and watching a glorious fireworks display at the Eiffel Tower from our window. We were joyful, oblivious to the events unfolding in Nice, almost 600 miles away

Written by Daniel Antonius, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York

Only four months after a series of coordinated attacks in Paris left 130 people dead, Europe was once again the target of chilling acts of terrorism when yesterday, March 22, 2016, two explosions rocked the airport in Brussels and another ripped through a subway station in the Belgian capital. At least 30 people were killed and several hundred others were wounded in the attack.

Since the Ukraine crisis exploded into civil conflict and war in 2013, we have known that we live in troubled times. It has become increasingly clear that the peace order in Europe, established at the end of the Cold War in 1989, is unstable.

Several Australian government politicians have said a frank discussion is needed about the causes of terrorism. Resources Minister Josh Frydenberg set the tone for the week by saying “religion is part of the problem”. There is a problem “within Islam”, he added.

Every religious community, at some point in its history, has harboured a vision of the apocalypse. It reminds us that the world periodically goes through tumultuous socio-religious strife, agonising chaos and unbearable anarchy.

In the aftermath of the co-ordinated terrorist attacks on Paris the urge to do something in response is understandably overwhelming. For want of something better to do when faced with an outrage of this sort, the default option is to bomb Syria.

Just this past weekend of July 4, US-led coalition aircraft targeted the ISIS stronghold of Raqqa in Syria. It was one of the “largest deliberate engagements to date,” said a coalition spokesman, and it was executed “to deny [ISIS] the ability to move military capabilities throughout Syria and into Iraq.”

The release of the CIA Torture Report last December re-opened the debate about using contractors to perform national security functions. Indeed, when Saturday Night Live mocks contractors for their role in waterboarding, you know that a national conversation has been unleashed.

And so it came, after years of protracted negotiations, extended deadlines and a diplomatic dance of unprecedented proportions – a deal that could signal a new era for Iran’s relations with the world. From media to academia, commentary ranges from cautious optimism to hawkish condemnation

It seems incredible that a pilot of a passenger airline could be locked out of the cockpit. But analysis from the cockpit voice recorder recovered from Germanwings flight 4U9525 after it ploughed into the Southern Alps in France has revealed that this is what happened and that one of the two pilots had been trying to get into the cockpit before the crash.

We need to define terrorism independently of who is employing it. Terrorism is violence against some innocent people aiming at intimidation and coercion of some other people. This definition says nothing about the identity of terrorists. They can be insurgents or criminals. But they can also be members of the military or of some state security agency.

After watching the movie “American Sniper,” I called a friend named Garett Reppenhagen who was an American sniper in Iraq. He deployed with a cavalry scout unit from 2004 to 2005 and was stationed near FOB Warhorse.

After killing 12 people at the offices of Charlie Hebdo, brothers Chérif and Saïd Kouachi were heard proclaiming, “we have avenged the Prophet Muhammad”. Amateur footage also revealed the killers invoking God with the Arabic phrase “Allahu Akbar”. This otherwise innocuous everyday religious utterance is frequently usurped as a jihadist battlecry.

The drums of war are beating once again with U.S. bombers to, in President Obama’s words, “degrade and destroy ISIS.” The Republican Party, led by war-at-any-cost Senators Lindsay Graham and John McCain, wants a bigger military buildup which can only mean U.S. soldiers on the ground.

In the wake of a recent Russian-U.S. deal averting American airstrikes, Syria has begun to answer questions about its chemical weapons stockpile. One thing inspectors don't have the mandate to ask is where those weapons came from in the first place.

The Syria situation continues to burn unabated – a conflict which becomes not only consistently more entrenched, violent, embittered and bloody, but which, in its quest for oxygen, has increasingly drawn in regional players like Israel, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Lebanon and Iran.

We are on the brink of a tragic decision to strike Syria, because, in the dubious logic of the President, “a lot of people think something should be done,” and American “credibility” is at stake. He and his secretary of state assure us that the strike will be “limited” and “surgical.” The use of chemical weapons against Syrian citizens is abominable, and if Assad’s regime is responsible he should be treated as an international criminal and pariah.

Remember the last time we were told military strikes were needed because a Middle Eastern despot had used weapons of mass destruction? As U.S. political and media leaders prepare for military strikes against Syria, the parallels to the lead-up to the war with Iraq should give us pause.

Pressure for a direct military intervention in Syria by the United States, Britain, France, Turkey, Israel and the reactionary Gulf Arab monarchies is reaching a critical point. At any moment, we could hear about drone strikes or attempts to set up a no-fly zone and other acts of war.

Just after Bradley Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison on Wednesday — and before Manning’s announcement of a gender transition earlier today — independent journalist Alexa O’Brien sat down with Manning’s attorney, David Coombs,

Richard Engel, NBC News chief foreign correspondent, talks with Rachel Maddow about the evidence presented by Syrian rebels that the government there has used chemical weapons against them and the arguments being made over what the evidence shows.

At least 525 people were killed in Egypt on Wednesday when security forces cracked down on two protest camps filled with supporters of ousted President Mohamed Morsi. The Muslim Brotherhood says the actual death toll tops 2,000, and has called new rallies for today.

“Collective trauma” happens to large groups of people — attempted genocide, war, disease, a terrorist attack — and can be transmitted down generations and throughout communities. Its effects are specific: fear, rage, depression, survivor guilt, and physical responses in the brain and body that can lead to illness and a sense of disconnection or detachment...

During the occupation of Iraq, the city of Fallujah bore witness to some of the most intense US combat operations since Vietnam, with 2004’s Operation Phantom Fury widely condemned for its ferocity and disregard for international law. Paediatrician Dr Samira Al’aani has worked in the city since 1997. In 2006 she began to notice an increase in the number of babies being born with congenital birth defects (CBD).

The Obama administration has announced it will keep 19 diplomatic posts in North Africa and the Middle East closed for up to a week, due to fears of a possible militant threat. On Sunday, Senator Saxby Chambliss, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the decision to close the embassies was based on information collected by the National Security Agency.

The US government is openly and actively engaged in a reincarnation of the Cold War. Physical assets such as spies and informants have been replaced with zero-day software exploits and network security analysts. Old-school intelligence gathering, while effective to some degree, pales in comparison with the scope of big-data firms such as Endgame and Palantir.

In a major national security speech this spring, President Obama said again and again that the U.S. is at war with “Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and their associated forces.” So who exactly are those associated forces? It’s a secret.

Humanity has come to a defining moment in its two hundred thousand year evolution: we are at a place where we either have to give up or we have to stand up.Last night, amidst a backdrop of fear-creation by the security state, where you either shut up or face the consequences, my wife and I were talking about standing up to empire and what it might mean.

Investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill and author Noam Chomsky recently sat down together at Harvard University to discuss Scahill’s groundbreaking new book, "Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield." Amy Goodman hosted the discussion, which was sponsored by the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, Harvard Kennedy School and the ACLU of Massachusetts.

The United States was dominant in a previously unimaginable way. What could possibly go wrong? What could stand in the way of the greatest power history had ever seen? Rearranging The Deck Chairs On Planet Titanic?

For our national security, the American people must recover control of our runaway, unilateral presidency that has torn itself away from constitutional accountabilities and continues to be hijacked by ideologues who ignore our Founding Fathers’ wisdom regarding the separation of powers...

Because there is no longer a trusted arbiter of the "truth" people are free to believe whatever they believe and hunker into their "silos" and receive only the information that reinforces their preconceptions.

Six days after the U.S. bombed his village, Yemeni activist Farea al-Muslimi testified on Capitol Hill about the terror of the U.S. drone wars. He spoke during the Senate’s first-ever public hearing on the Obama administration’s targeted killing program...

As new details shed light on the lives of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects' lives leading up to the attack, Chris Hayes talks with Maya Berry of the Arab American Institute and former federal prosecutor Ken Ballen about what we should know about the process of violent radicalization.

Mike Papantonio, Ring of Fire Radio, joins Thom Hartmann. A new bipartisan report makes startling conclusions about the Bush Administration's role in detainee torture programs. Will we ever hold those responsible for one of the most shameful periods in our history accountable for their crimes?

We are being given lessons in morality [by world leaders] while tens of thousands are being killed, while whole countries are shattered, while whole civilizations are driven back decades, if not centuries, and everything continues as normal

follow InnerSelf on

Please whitelist our website https://InnerSelf.com. Nearly 70% of our visitors currently use ad blockers, however, we depend on advertising so you can read these articles. We only use Google advertising, consequently ads are delivered safely and using only Google advertisers.